A Little COVID And a Snake
Infection Section
I heard a nurse saying that she refuses to be vaccinated because the vaccine won’t prevent her from spreading the virus, should she become infected. She may be right. But what she ignores is the obvious, that if she and those she encounters, like her husband, her kids, her friends and the clerk at the supermarket all get vaccinated, there will be no virus to pass along. She knows she’s rolling the dice for herself, but she refuses to do her part for the rest of us.
Questions for our religious refusers – maybe including that nurse:
- Are you your brother’s keeper, or has that been superseded by “It’s all about ME?”
- And that Golden Rule thing – whatever happened to that?
One more time: The refusers have the freedom to refuse to be vaccinated. Maybe they’ll live; maybe they’ll die. It’s a risk they take knowingly. But under no circumstances do they have the right to infect others.
What About the Kids?
Click the chart for the KFF study
The chart on the left is from a Kaiser Family Foundation poll, which reports that 24% of parents definitely won’t (green bars) get their 5 – 11 year old kids vaccinated. To be fair, the data shows that unvaccinated kids are much like our vaccinated elderly, in terms of protection from serious complications from COVID. Nevertheless, kids are dying from this disease. We can prevent that from happening, but not by continuing to do what’s getting kids killed.
Was it this hard in the 1950s to get kids vaccinated against polio? Were parents then really willing to go bare and risk their kids’ lives and the lives of other kids for some misplaced sense of freedom? They weren’t, but millions are doing that now.
A Little Horsing Around
The picture of the horse and the post below are from the FDA.
Ivermectin is not only not an authorized treatment for COVID, but there is no peer reviewed medical data that says Ivermectin does anything helpful for patients with COVID. Unless, of course, they also had intestinal parasites. At least those patients who self-medicate with Ivermectin will know that when they die from COVID they won’t have worms in their GI system.
Big 4-year Trump dip. Now the world sees us coming back. Kind of like after George W. Bush. We came back then, too. Create your own story line for what you see.
A COVID Bookkeeping Adjustment
There are about 64 million adults refusing to be vaccinated. In addition, as stated above, about 24% of parents intend to refuse to allow their children ages 5 – 11 to be vaccinated. The data – the science – is clear that over 98% of COVID hospitalizations and deaths are of people who are not vaccinated. They are the glut of patients that have overwhelmed our healthcare workers.
We’ve made vaccinations available in over 89,000 pharmacies, in school gymnasiums, in drive-through hospital parking lots and elsewhere. Plus, the vaccinations are free to the stick-ee. We couldn’t have made it easier to become protected, but still people proclaim their freedom and their conspiracy nonsense. Then they clog up our hospitals and dump an inhumane workload on our medical people. Because of the enormous medical overload, care is now being rationed in several states, which means that people suffering from strokes, heart attacks, cancer, automobile collisions and other maladies can’t get the care they need. That isn’t okay. Fortunately, I have a cure for this.
Many of the refusers are getting cash from the government in one form or another. Some collect Social Security. Some get agriculture subsidies. Some get the benefits of Medicare or Medicaid or child tax credits or federal pensions.
They refuse to do what will protect themselves and, therefore, protect the rest of us, and instead they dump huge costs on us. Something isn’t right about that. So, I propose that we stop all federal government payouts to those people, whether payments are direct or indirect. Instead we’ll pump that money into hospital staffing and facilities.
The refusers – our rugged individuals – are making the problem. They can damn well pay for the harm they do.
Snakes
From David Brock, writing about how he didn’t see the awfulness of Trump coming:
He was an obvious pig (see the “Access Hollywood” tapes [and 19 accusations of rape]), a fraud (multiple failed businesses and bankruptcies) and a cheat (stiffing mom-and-pop vendors). Not to mention the blatant racism and misogyny.
We knew all of that in 2016, but Trump got elected anyway. All those self-righteous evangelicals, the freedom fanatics, the enraged and resentful, the racists and homophobes, the Hillary haters and the rest voted for Trump anyway, somehow excusing or ignoring the miserable truth of him. I’m reminded of the story of the boy and the snake.
The little boy was playing in the woods when suddenly a snake popped up and hissed. The boy was frightened, then amazed when the snake spoke to him.
“Hi, little boy. Let’s play.”
The boy cowered and said, “But you’re a poisonous snake. If I play with you you’ll bite me and I’ll die.”
“No I won’t,” said the snake. I’m a nice snake and I won’t bite you. You look like a nice little boy and I just want to play. Come on, let’s play.”
The boy slowly came forward and soon the boy and the snake were playing, rolling in the leaves on the ground and laughing. Then the snake bit him.
“You bit me!” screamed the boy. “You promised you wouldn’t bite me. That’s not fair.”
Said the snake, “You knew what I was when you picked me up.”
Those who ignored the reality of Trump in 2016 and all the apologists since then know what he is. So do the cowardly politicians who proclaim what they know to be false in order to be in his thrall, as they mouth his democracy destroying lies.
Brock was fooled in 2016 and for a while longer. There is no way for any of us to be fooled now. We know what he is. It falls to all of us to refuse the lying snake and all of his enabling supplicants, lest we be terminally poisoned.
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Copyright 2021 by Jack Altschuler
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